For those deterred by verbosity, the meaning of Cummings' poems is generally the same as the meaning of sunsets and
rainbows. They don't mean, they just are. Analyses are therefore somewhat superfluous, and you may not be much wiser
after you read this entire essay.
Understanding and interpreting the poetry of E. E. Cummings is rather different from the problem of deciphering the
meaning of most poets. There are few obscure classical or literary allusions to be explained, and few problems of language.
Perhaps that is why most "interpretations" of Cummings and of some other modern poets (William Carlos Williams for
example) that I have seen appear to be stuffy or absurd. Some of the
biographical references are fairly obvious, but
beyond that, we won't get far when the usual approach to poetical criticism and analysis is applied to Cummings.
For example, it is not really helpful, and perhaps a trifle silly, to explain to readers that in
somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond,
"the poet or the object of the poem is addressing his beloved." That doesn't prevent people from offering such
atrocities, but like the man said, being doesn't pay the rent of seem.
Cummings often wrote in very straightforward prosaic English, was sometimes playful or "vulgar" and sometimes created
word-images that are difficult to "analyze" and easier to feel. More than most poets, he often seems to be striving for
the ideal of the great craftsman: to make the difficult look simple, to give the reader the feeling of "oh, I could have
written that." On the other hand, anyone who tries to put syntactic meaning into some of his word-image poems will find
themselves saying "huh??"
Because of the unconventional nature of Cummings' poetry, the usual tools of literary criticism are not very useful.
Perhaps for this reason, he was not taught in poetry courses for many years, and unlike T. S. Eliot and other more
obscure and "erudite" contemporaries, was rarely to be found in "Serious" literary anthologies. He could not be made to
fit into the conventional rubric. In any case, his morality, like the teachings of Socrates, would certainly corrupt
the young. It is therefore interesting to see that today Cummings, the anti-classicist, is often regarded as a "classic" poet.
The avant-garde of the 1930s, being mostly Marxist, did not like Cummings either, as Cummings was outspoken in his
contempt for "Kumrads." That circumstance left Cummings to the rest of us, who turned out to be a relatively large
following.
It would be, and probably is, humorously ironic that such a villain of the "party of the proletariat" will become the
uncrowned poet laureate of the common man, but that is not the only irony of Cummings' poetic career.
Cummings was also an artist, and took great pains with the layout and typography of his poems. The world however, was
not quite ready for him in his time. This is how Time magazine misunderstood E. E. Cummings in 1958:
Edward Estlin Cummings, 64 next week, is the goat-footed
balloonMan of U.S. poetry, an image he himself used to describe a Pan-piping street vendor of gay toy balloons. In the
weather of this poet's heart the season is spring, and as this first collection of new poems in eight years testifies,
there is plenty of spring left in his lines (95 Poems; Harcourt, Brace; $4). As ever, Poet Cummings celebrates the life
of feeling--love, death and the infinite sea changes of nature. Age has only slightly mellowed Cummings, has not at all
curbed his typographical pretzel bending--which can now be recognized for the attention-holding device it is. Fresh,
singular, vivid and intense, Cummings' verses recall the aim he once set for himself as a poet: "I can express it in 15
words, by quoting The Eternal Question and Immortal Answer of Burlesk, viz., 'Would you hit a woman with a child?--No,
I'd hit her with a brick.'" Cummings is still hitting his readers with bricks--but also with the flowers and the fancies
of a unique lyricism.
It is a relatively charitable review, in a way, but it illustrates what happens when you cast pearls before swine, and
it expressed the attitude of the literary "establishment" to Cummings. It was well-meaning but painfully
ignorant. The typography was not "an attention getting
device" and Cummings, far from being a goat-footed (reference to his sex poems) balloon man, was possibly the most
romantic (in the literary and intellectual sense, not in the sense of "castles in Spain" "literature") of poets since Byron. In this, he was very different from many of the poets whose
outlook and experiences were formed and deformed by World War I. His macho romanticism, like that of Hemingway, was very
far from the brittle and dry despair of the "old man in a dry month" of T. S. Eliot. For Cummings, the world would end
neither with a bang nor a whimper. It would not end, because love and nature and illogic would keep it going and would
affirm the triumph of mankind in the face of death.
E. E. Cummings, for all his unconventionality, made use of many classical poetical associations, metaphors and devices:
Spring - love-flowers and the contrast of love and joy with death and the human condition. He had an ideology of life
and art that guided much of his work, which sometimes seems to have produced a didactic, almost preachy feel in some of
it. One pillar of this ideology was that love, passion and feelings are more important and finer than logic, order and
science, and nature is superior to book-learning. This is coupled with an at-times in-your-face anti-intellectualism. He
never seems to have tired of re-asserting this credo. For example, in
since feeling is first:
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
...
kisses are a far better fate than wisdom
"Kisses are a far better fate than wisdom" might well
be his motto -- a not unknown theme of earlier poets, expressed in the language of the uncommon man.
And the
same theme of "dumb science" appears most outspokenly perhaps in "O Sweet Spontaneous"
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
A second
pillar of Cummings' credo was "you and I are different. The rest of THEM don't 'get it.'" This sort of elitism, novel
for its time, was going to please neither the paragons of conventionality nor the leftist cadres of proletarian revolution
and the brotherhood of man. In an introduction to a volume of his poems, he wrote:
The poems to come are for you and for me and are not
for mostpeople-- it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common
with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being
born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked
out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming
with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of
nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying--
....
Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be
continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush "tie it to
my hand"--
nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or
extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints
childrening,innocent spontaneous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers
which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating
or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct
selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of
wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing
ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow.
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question
In the 1960s, the above might have
the battle cry of the Woodstock generation. But it was not written in the 1960s. Cummings died in 1962.
In the
late 1950s, this might have been considered the manifesto of the beat generation, and a protest against the conformism
and artificial asepsis of the Man in the Grey Flannel suit, and the TV situation comedies in which nobody ever alluded
to "natural bodily functions." But it was not written in the 1950s. It was written in the
introduction to "New Poems [from Collected Poems]," in 1938. Cummings had somehow conjured up the world of
Eisenhower-era America, about 20 years before its time, and rejected it. Who knew what he was talking about then?
The cynics might maintain that like the typography,
this manifesto of reverse elitism was a pose, a device to make the readers feel they are part of an exclusive "in" club,
with entrance forbidden to "squares." It can be
interpreted as the sort of adolescent neurotic philosophy that was caricatured by J. D. Salinger in "The Catcher in the
Rye" - everyone else is "phoney."
Cummings' poetry, in his different phases, was uneven.
At its worst, it was doggerel or worse, sometimes expressing racist sentiments or anti-socialist realism, for he too
sometimes fell into the trap of prostituting art to social issues, and some of his views were certainly obnoxious and
inexcusable by any standard. He also made some experiments that don't seem to have worked. At his best, in each
period Cummings was lyrical and exquisite and profound or playful and airy and sometimes all of them at once. He created
works of awesome lasting beauty that are all the more valuable because they can be appreciated by everyone.
Cummings had, and used, several great gifts that are
the foundation of all great poetry.
The first gift was the ability of indirect
communication. He could use words to create a mood, to implant ideas, images and emotions in the minds of his readers,
without being explicit, and sometimes without the reader really knowing where the idea came from.
The second gift, was the ability to use the English
language in novel and unexpected ways. In its vulgar form, this art is the basis of the pun and the joke. In its highest
incarnation, it is the stuff of Shakespeare's greatness. Cummings himself, put it like this:
My theory of technique, if I have one, is very far from original; nor is it complicated. I can express it in fifteen
words, by quoting The Eternal Question And Immortal Answer of burlesk, viz. "Would you hit a woman with a child?-- No,
I'd hit her with a brick." Like the burlesk comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates
movement. [EIMI (1933)]
A third gift, mentioned above and common to all fine
craftsmen as well as artists, was the ability to "make it look easy." This, like the typography, is a very deceptive
feature in Cummings' poems. As noted, he was an artist (I mean, a painter-type artist) and made put a lot of thought and
work into the layout of his poems. Equally, the lack of formal conventional versification and of obvious rhythm and rhyme, conceals the great efforts that
Cummings often made to ensure that the music and melody of his poems were perfect. These are evident in his readings,
and indeed, several of his poems have been set to music.
Another of his gifts, which is perhaps
the key to enduring art since Cro-Magnon men were painting caves, was the ability to generate creations that can
be understood and appreciated on many levels and that speak to everyone who will listen.
Many artists are coy about explaining the "meaning"
of their creations, frustrating and challenging critics. Cummings was exceptionally coy, and perhaps justifiably so.
What he said of his play, HIM, may be applied to much of his work:
Don't
try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON'T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU."
Of course, that is poor fare for
literary analysis, and not an answer you are supposed to give in a university examination, and that may help to explain
Cummings' unpopularity in certain circles.
Cummings would certainly have agreed with the
famous dictum that poetry should never
be dull. He wrote "..the dull are the damned." But that dictum is more honored by critics in the breach than in the
observance. Cummings is generally not dull enough for them.
Consider this for example:
But while poetry should never be dull, it is
supposed to be hard; it demands a more involved response from the reader than, for example, most popular novels... -- (see
http://www.plagiarist.com/articles/36/ )
How can what is hard not be dull?
How could what is enjoyable be truly difficult?
The only enjoyment one can get from such works is in the achievement of deciphering the hidden meaning. Deciphering the
Rosetta stone must have given great satisfaction to those who accomplished it, but it was surely dull work. E. E.
Cummings compared his work
to burlesk comedy and rightly insisted that the circus is art. He would never accept the self-important judgment that
"poetry is supposed to be hard."
Is poetry supposed to be 'hard'? Really? Are you
sure? How did poetry start? Poetry was the "popular novel" of the preliterate and mostly illiterate periods of civilization. It was
the popular medium for transmitting history, entertainment and all other non-literate "literature." This later became the
"Odyssey" and the "Iliad" of Homer, and the "Song of Miriam" and the "Song of Deborah" of the Hebrew
Bible, as well as
numerous similar works of early Semitic and Mesopotamian and Mediterranean civilizations, explicitly designed for relay
by oral tradition and for the appreciation and understanding of the illiterate masses. Shakespeare's plays are "hard"
for us because they are in Elizabethan English, but the people of Elizabethan times were especially gifted, and
spoke Elizabethan English as their mother tongue, just as French children today are precocious and speak French at an
early age. The theater crowd of Elizabethan England was mostly the "everyman" of those times.
Some of Cummings' poems are really 'hard,' in the
sense that most of us won't "get" them immediately, but as we
saw above, his prose is often not not "easy" either, and "explanations" often will not help understanding.
Modern poetry often takes it for granted that perception is a private and unique experience. Your sunset is not like my
sunset, and I can't "explain" my sunset to you. Your understanding of:
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
is possibly not going to be the same as my
understanding no matter what. I can't explain how the rain could have hands, or rather if I did, and you didn't "get"
the metaphor, it would not help your understanding. You may never see a red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens
(either the actual ones or the poem by William Carlos Williams) in the same way as I do. Suppose you didn't understand
why Cummings' burlesk example is supposed to be funny:
"Would you hit a
woman with a child?-- No, I'd hit her with a brick."
It might help some people to explain that "hit a
woman with a child" was slang for leaving a woman to have a child out of wedlock. But probably, if you do not get the joke, you
just don't get it and won't get it no matter what explanation you get. In the best case, you will only be able to answer the examination
question correctly, but the joke will not amuse you.
Or perhaps, in the red wheelbarrow and white
chickens, we both see the same thing, but we could never explain it to each other, just as we cannot explain how to see
red or what the quality of redness is.
Cummings' "faith" was that the simplest and most beautiful things
are not amenable to logical dissection. Many of Cummings' poems are "hard" only for those who have been indoctrinated
into believing that only poets who write like Addison or Pope or Wordsworth are "good." They attack the innocent
art object, which may have been written just for fun, or for the imagery it evokes, with the tools of their trade, tools
generally suitable for dissecting the poetry of obtuse obscurantists and precious prigs. They prod here, and they poke there, looking for hidden linguistic meanings and
allusions to classical literature and intellectual puzzles, when there aren't any that are amenable to such prodding or
that are needed for understanding the poem. If you never read a medieval epic poem, you could still enjoy
All in green went my love riding
and "understand" it just as well or as poorly.
These would-be
"analysts" are like the philosophers poking away at sweet spontaneous earth or chipping away at the marble of a statue,
trying to understand what makes it beautiful.
Cummings' poems, like the rain, and roses and stars,
like kittens and puppies
and the magic of love, are there for you to enjoy, at whatever level you may enjoy them. Your enjoyment will not
necessarily be enhanced by "understanding" this or that allusion, any more than your enjoyment of a rose will be enhanced by a course in
botany, or your enjoyment of a virgin will be enhanced by a course in anatomy. If you take apart an automobile, you will
perhaps learn how to build one. If you take apart a rose or a poem, you understand how they are made, but not what makes
them beautiful.
Ami Isseroff
Scary Notice
The above is only a personal and imperfect view, and
is offered with no guarantee of correctness for academic or other purposes. If you copy my ideas for your term
paper and get an F, tough luck. This page is very copyright. It
may be quoted provided that credit is given to the author, and this page and Web site are cited. Don't even think about
plagiarizing it and putting it in its entirety at your Web site, but you may (in fact I dare to hope you will) quote small excerpts from it with
full attribution a link to this page:
If you have experienced love, death, life, sickness,
spring, flowers and rain, and let all of them talk to you, then you are about as well prepared to understand E. E.
Cummings' poetry as a Professor of English literature. Therefore, if you have questions we probably will not be able to
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